Japan has a long history with plant medicines, including cannabis and psychedelics, but like most of the world, after WWII they were forced to change their drug laws to match those of the United States. Now, Japan is in a similar place to where the United States was back in the 1990s, with activists fighting to re-educate society about that rich history and a medical cannabis industry in its earliest phases.
Can You Bring Cannabis to Japan?
Before getting into Japanese cannabis laws, a word on bringing cannabis to Japan. As this Japanese Customs brochure makes clear, “Don’t even think about bringing drugs into JAPAN!” Punishments are different depending on the substance in question, and even legally prescribed opioids need pre-approval from the Japanese government or you may be arrested when you enter the country. When it comes to cannabis, importing cannabis to Japan with no intent to sell can be punished by up to seven years in prison, with intent to sell, it could become ten years. Simple possession of cannabis is up to five years, with intent to sell, it becomes seven years. By comparison, Japanese laws on selling opium are less restrictive than those for cannabis.
History of Cannabis Use In Japan
Japan has a long history with cannabis and hemp, dating back to the Jomon Period (roughly 11,000-300 B.C.), some of the earliest evidence of use is from pottery recovered from the Fukui Prefecture. Junichi Takayasu, who founded a cannabis museum in Tochigi Prefecture, is an expert on the history of cannabis in Japan and says “Most Japanese people see cannabis as a subculture of Japan but they’re wrong, Cannabis has been at the very heart of Japanese culture for thousands of years.” During the following millenia, cannabis and hemp played important roles in Japanese culture, with hemp being used to craft all manner of things from clothing to sacred Shinto rope, and cannabis based medicines available in drug stores until the 20th century.
Takayasu says that during WWII, “there was a saying among the military that without cannabis, the war couldn’t be waged.” Everything changed after WWII, when Japan lost the war the United States occupied Japan, and brought their prohibitionist view of drugs with them.
Hemp and Religious Usage
Shintoism, the native belief system of Japan which predates historical records, is a spirituality that recognizes the divine spirit (Kami) of things in nature such as trees, mountains, and waterfalls. Shinto translates to “the way of the gods” and celebrates the seasons, showing reverence through a small shrine near the natural spirit being honored. Shinto also includes rituals to purify, which traditionally involve priests waving bundles of hemp leaves.
Beyond bundles of hemp leaves, Shinto shrines are adorned with shimenawa, a sacred rope made from hemp. Given the importance of hemp to practitioners of Shinto, even though cannabis cultivation is very harshly regulated in Japan, there is a special license for people growing hemp to produce shimenawa.
CBD Is Legal, But Limited
Thanks to a loophole in Japan’s Cannabis Control Act, CBD products derived from hemp have been legal since 2013, so long as they meet certain requirements. First off, it is effectively impossible to extract CBD from hemp grown in Japan, so all legal CBD products are imported, and those imported products must certify that they are THC-free. Secondly, the only legal CBD in Japan must be extracted from the stem and seeds only, which means, unlike France, CBD flower is not legal.
Despite these limitations, a Tokyo-based research group estimates that the Japanese CBD industry was estimated to be $59 million in 2019, nearly 20 times what it was in 2015. Future projections anticipate the CBD industry in Japan could be $800 million by 2024. Part of the reason for that growth is that, just like in the U.S., clever chemists are tweaking CBD into THC-O and a range of other cannabinoids.
Medical Cannabis Still a Work in Progress
While CBD is legal for some uses in Japan, at present, they still have not finalized their attempts at medical legalization which began in 2021, when the health ministry announced a plan to potentially reform the Cannabis Control Act. Part of that reform effort involved the creation of an expert committee, and those experts recommended various reforms, including medical cannabis legalization. Currently, the Cannabis Control Act uses a part-based system, where certain parts of the plant are prohibited or legal for use (and where the current CBD loophole came from). Experts hope that current reforms could include switching to an ingredient based system (just looking at cannabinoid content). The benefits of that switch could include the legalization of smoked or vaporized CBD flower, or possibly the birth of a medical cannabis industry.
Psychedelics in Japan
Despite extremely restrictive laws around cannabis, psychedelic mushrooms, peyote, and other hallucinogens were legal in Japan until 2002. Those psychedelic plants were sold by street vendors and in vending machines at “love hotels,” and there generally was a permissive attitude towards plant psychedelics. That all changed in 2002, when Japanese authorities changed the law and closed the loophole around plant psychedelics, possibly because the World Cup raised concerns about hordes of soccer hooligans high on mushrooms. Those enterprising street vendors have not gone out of business, and now sell “dappou herb,” which is a similar idea to spice or bath salts (the quasi legal drugs), plant matter sprayed with substances that resembles other drugs (stimulants, cannabinoids, hallucinogens, etc).
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